“Anguish shall spread itself over the land. The small birds’ nests shall fall from the branches. The hawk’s nest in the pine-tree’s top shall be shaken down to the earth with a great noise, and even the eagle’s nest in the mountain cleft shall the wind drag out with its dragon tongue.
“We thought that all was well with us; but it was not so. God’s storm is needed. I understand that, and I do not complain. I only wish that I might go to my mother.”
“Go now, young woman,” she says. “I have no more time. I must go. Go now, and look out for them who ride on the storm-cloud!”
Thereupon she renews her wandering. Her features relax, her glance turns inward. The countess and Madame Scharling have to leave her.
As soon as they are back again among the dancers the young countess goes straight to Gösta Berling.
“I can greet you from the major’s wife,” she says. “She is waiting for you to get her out of prison.”
Gösta stares gloomily before him. “No,” he says, “why should I help her? What thanks do I owe her? Everything she has done for me has been to my ruin.”
“If she had not existed,” he says angrily, “I would now be sleeping up there in the forest. Is it my duty to risk my life for her, because she has made me a pensioner at Ekeby? Do you think much credit goes with that profession?”
The young countess turns away from him without answering. She is angry.
She goes back to her place thinking bitter thoughts of the pensioners. They have come to-night with horns and fiddles, and mean to let the bows scrape the strings until the horse-hair is worn through, without thinking that the merry tunes ring in the prisoner’s miserable room. They come here to dance until their shoes fall to pieces, and do not remember that their old benefactress can see their shadows whirling by the misty window-panes. Alas, how gray and ugly the world was! Alas, what a shadow trouble and hardness had cast over the young countess’s soul!
After a while Gösta comes to ask her to dance.
“Will you not dance with me, countess?” he asks, and grows very red.
“Neither with you nor with any other of the Ekeby pensioners,” she says.
“It is no honor, Herr Berling. But it gives me no pleasure to dance with those who forget the precepts of gratitude.”